1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printed material inspection system including a post-processing apparatus that performs post-processing on a printed material and an inspection apparatus that inspects the printed material, and to a control method for such a system.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have thus far been on-demand printing systems that process a series of print jobs by printing using an electrophotographic- or inkjet-type printing apparatus and providing a post-processing apparatus that supplies paper, discharges paper, performs post-processing on printed paper, and so on in a stage previous to or following the printing apparatus. A variety of accessory devices are attached to the printing apparatus. Such accessory devices include, for example, sheet feeding decks for supplying various types of paper that are set therein, punchers for punching holes in paper, inserters for inserting printed paper, folders for folding paper, trimmers for cutting paper, stackers for arranging paper, and so on. Although whether or not each type of accessory device will be attached can be determined as desired, the position (order) in which the devices are attached is set in advance in the system, and a printing system is configured by attaching the devices according to that order. This is because respective accessory devices handle the post-processing that is performed on the printed paper, and because the order in which the accessory devices are disposed is set based on the final state of the printed material (for example, whether or not the printed material will be bound).
A printed material inspection apparatus that automatically inspects whether or not a printed material is soiled or the like by reading an image on the printed material using a camera, a line scanner, or the like has been proposed as one such accessory device. For example, Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent No. 4470500) discloses making it possible to set a quality determination standard for images for each of different types of print media, in the case where a printed material in which various types of print media, such as copy paper, Japanese paper, and pre-print paper that is ruled, are intermixed is to be inspected.
However, the invention disclosed in the aforementioned Patent Document 1 does not consider adding an inspection apparatus that inspects images on printed materials to a printing system to which various accessory devices are attached. Unlike the aforementioned accessory devices, it is necessary to change the details of the processing performed by the inspection apparatus depending on where the inspection apparatus is connected. It is generally necessary for the inspection apparatus to be located after the final accessory device and inspect the printed material when the printed material is close to the final product stage. However, depending on the processing performed by an accessory device, there are cases where the printed material cannot be inspected after that processing. For example, if a binding process that folds the printed material or staples the printed material is carried out, images on that printed material cannot be read and inspected. In addition, in the case where holes are punched in the printed material using a puncher, it is necessary to change the details of the inspection depending on whether the inspection apparatus is in a stage previous to or following the puncher.